Beyond this place (38 page)

There was a painful pause, then, not looking at his son, Mathry resumed in a lifeless voice.

"Can you guess what it's like in chokey . . . hundreds of men . . . strong men in their prime . . . cut off from women. Not nice to think about, eh? Sex is dirty when it's to do with convicts. The prison visiting committee . . . sanctimonious bastards . . . don't even give it a thought. But they would all right, by God, if they were in there. Day and night, week after week, month after month, it works on vou till you think you're going crazy. You can't help human nature. You lie there in your cell at night and think . . . imagine a woman waiting for you outside . . . beautiful, young,

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wanting you . . . waiting . . . until you're ready to smash the walls down with your bare fists in an effort to get out. And now I do come out . . . what a hellish joke ... I find it's all dead and gone forever."

Suddenly, to Paul's concern and distress, Mathry's chest gave a great convulsive heave, his stiff face began, under its mask, to work pitiably.

"Everything goes wrong for me. Every blasted thing. Even the re-trial. What a washout it was today. I got no satisfaction. All these dressed-up bastards of lawyers with their fancy talk. Why don't they do something for a change? Why wouldn't they let me speak? They were only laughing up their sleeves at me. I'm a freak . . . don't fit in anywhere. I'll never be any good. I'm finished and done for. I never done no murder. It's them that has murdered me."

His pipe had gone out, his face was grey, his whole body shook with anguish.

Paul felt his heart melt. But this weakness in his father, this unexpected gleam of hope was too precious to be wasted by an equal weakness, an answering show of feeling. While his breast throbbed, he steeled himself to answer coldly.

"You're certainly not done for." He waited long enough for this to sink in. "What you've had to go through has changed you a lot. But as far as years go, you're not an old man. It's up to you to readjust your ideas and go in for what really suits you."

"Nothing suits me," Mathry muttered. "I've a good mind to finish myself. Coming by the canal bridge tonight I stood looking over . . . and very near threw myself in."

"That would be an excellent way to repay me for all that I've done for you."

Mathry raised his grey head, which was bowed upon his chest, and stole a look at his son.

"Yes," he muttered. "You've been good to me, you have."

"Drown yourself, if you want to," Paul continued in a cutting tone. "Get out of your troubles the easy way. But it seems to me there's a slightly more sensible idea. You'll be getting a lump sum soon. Oh, yes you will, in spite of what you think. Why don't you buy yourself a little farm in the country . . . get out in the fresh

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"Then order for me as well."

Paul went to the room telephone and asked them to send up the table d'hote dinner tor two. Deliberately, he made no comment to Mathry, but took up a book again while the table was being set.

Presently the meal arrived — soup, roast mutton served with peas and potatoes, apple pie, all kept hot under double covers — and they sat down to it in silence. Mathry ate with less than his usual appetite, and alter a while his efforts seemed to flag. Without finishing his dessert, he stood up and went over to the armchair where he slowly filled and lit the pipe which he had recently adopted. His lumpy figure sagged into the weak chair springs. He looked a spent old man.

"Aren't you wondering why I'm in tonight?" he inquired, at length. "Now the show's over, I ought to be out on the skite."

"Nothing you do surprises me," Paul said.

While he continued to use that indifferent tone which he knew would most provoke Mathry to continue, he got up from the table and took a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace.

"I'm sick of that gang I've been running around with." Mathry spoke with sudden bitterness. "All they're doing is making a mug of me. They keep telling me what a great man I am, then they order the drinks and let me pay for them. Dirty lot of spongers. The women are the worst. What do they care? Not a cursed thing. They'd take my last bob, and laugh at me. And you know for why. Because I'm no good at all now . . . not a stricken bit of use."

There was a painful pause, then, not looking at his son, Mathry resumed in a lifeless voice.

"Can you guess what it's like in chokey . . . hundreds of men . . . strong men in their prime . . . cut off from women. Not nice to think about, eh? Sex is dirty when it's to do with convicts. The prison visiting committee . . . sanctimonious bastards . . . don't even give it a thought. But they would all right, by God, if they were in there. Day and night, week after week, month after month, it works on vou till you think you're going crazy. You can't help human nature. You lie there in your cell at night and think . . . imagine a woman waiting for you outside . . . beautiful, young,

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wanting you . . . waiting . . . until you're ready to smash the walls down with your bare fists in an effort to get out. And now I do come out . . . what a hellish joke ... I find it's all dead and gone forever."

Suddenly, to Paul's concern and distress, Mathry's chest gave a great convulsive heave, his stiff face began, under its mask, to work pitiably.

"Everything goes wrong for me. Every blasted thing. Even the re-trial. What a washout it was today. I got no satisfaction. All these dressed-up bastards of lawyers with their fancy talk. Why don't they do something for a change? Why wouldn't they let me speak? They were only laughing up their sleeves at me. I'm a freak . . . don't fit in anywhere. I'll never be any good. I'm finished and done for. I never done no murder. It's them that has murdered me."

His pipe had gone out, his face was grey, his whole body shook with anguish.

Paul felt his heart melt. But this weakness in his father, this unexpected gleam of hope was too precious to be wasted by an equal weakness, an answering show of feeling. While his breast throbbed, he steeled himself to answer coldly.

"You're certainly not done for." He waited long enough for this to sink in. "What you've had to go through has changed you a lot. But as far as years go, you're not an old man. It's up to you to readjust your ideas and go in for what really suits you."

"Nothing suits me," Mathry muttered. "I've a good mind to finish myself. Coming by the canal bridge tonight I stood looking over . . . and very near threw myself in."

"That would be an excellent way to repay me for all that I've done for you."

Mathry raised his grey head, which was bowed upon his chest, and stole a look at his son.

"Yes," he muttered. "You've been good to me, you have."

"Drown yourself, if you want to," Paul continued in a cutting tone. "Get out of your troubles the easy way. But it seems to me there's a slightly more sensible idea. You'll be getting a lump sum soon. Oh, yes you will, in spite of what you think. Why don't you buy yourself a little farm in the country . . . get out in the fresh

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air, have your own place, your own chickens and eggs . . . forget about hating people. . . . You'll get your health back in the country . . . feel younger in mind and body." Paul's voice rose suddenly. "I got you out, didn't I? At least make the most of the years I've given you."

"I couldn't do it," Mathry said in a husky voice.

"Yes, you could," Paul exclaimed. "And I'll help you. I'll try and get a school near you. Be on hand if you need me."

"No . . . you wouldn't do that? Or would you?"

"Yes."

Mathry again stole that shrinking look at Paul. His chapped lips trembled.

"I'm all in," he muttered. "I think I'll go to bed."

Paul felt his heart lift, as at a great victory. What had caused Mathry to break down in this fashion he could not guess — he had not dared to hope for it. But in this crumbling front he saw a future for both of them, a final justification snatched in the moment of defeat. He was glad he had decided to wait on.

He looked straight at his father, keeping his voice under control.

"You'll feel better after a good sleep."

Mathry got to his feet.

"In the country . . ." he muttered. "With chickens and a cow ... it would be fine . . . but could I . . . ?"

"Yes," Paul said again, more firmly.

There was a moment's hesitation.

"All right," Mathry said in a queer hoarse tone. He opened his mouth, closed it again. "Now I'll go and turn in." Suddenly he paused, as though struck by something, lifted his head and looked into the distance. His voice took on a different quality — remote, human, and strangely timorous.

"Do you remember . . . Paul ... on Jesmond Dene . . . when we used to sail the paper boats?"

He gave his son a shamed, contorted look and, brushing his hand across his inflamed and watery eyes, shambled out of the room.

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CHAPTER XX

FOR a long time Paul remained in the sitting room. Now, after all, he could carry out his plan. It was not the idyhic vision he might once have entertained of a rose-embowered cottage set on a hill above green meadows in the deep countryside. This new maturity that had replaced his sentimental adolescence had made him soberly practical, wary of rash enthusiasms. He must complete his teacher's course, not in Belfast — that was now unthinkable — but at one of the smaller English provincial universities, Durham perhaps, where the fees were moderate and the tuition excellent. In the suburbs of this Northern cathedral city he would surely find some sort of dwelling, no matter how primitive, to house them both, with an allotment garden in which Mathry might find the incentive to work out his salvation. Could this regeneration be achieved? Paul did not know. He had heard of cases where men, released after long terms of penal servitude, fifteen, twenty, even thirty years, had managed to resume an existence of complete normality, to lose themselves in the crowd, achieve a tranquil and hum-drum old age. But they, of course, had not been wrongfully imprisoned.

Quickly, before the throb of injustice could start in him again, Paul got to his feet. He wished nothing to disturb that new sense of peace, almost of placidity, which had replaced his violent rage against the law. It was not late and before retiring he decided to take a walk. Switching out the light and moving quietly along the corridor so that he might not disturb Mathry, he went downstairs.

The evenings were lengthening and, outside, the last of the daylight lingered, as though reluctant to depart. The air was warm, luminous, and still. Stirred by the beauty of the twilight he strolled away from the hotel.

He had meant to walk at random, yet though his route was circuitous, he evinced no surprise when, half an hour later, he found

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himself in the familiar precincts of Ware Place. Outside Lena's lodging he drew up, and from the opposite side of the street, resting against the iron railings, he gazed upwards at the blank, unlit windows of the untenanted upper storey.

The days of stifling uncertainty were over, his nerves were no longer on the rack. Liberated from his obsession, he was at last free to appreciate all that Lena had done for him. Now he realized that without her help his father would still be in Stoneheath and he, almost certainly, would not have survived. A pang of regret for his insensitiveness, his lack of gratitude, stung him, together with a sudden longing, that was almost unbearable, to see her again. If only she might appear, at this instant, from the shadows, bareheaded, wearing her old raincoat buttoned up at the neck, hollow-cheeked and pensive, so generous and humble, so heedless of herself, yet exhaling that northern freshness which lay on her like dew.

How puerile had been his attitude towards her, how immature his recoil from the outrage that had flawed her virginity. Now he could think calmly of that act of defilement, the details of which had previously caused him a sick, insensate rage. Now, indeed, because of that violation, he felt for her a greater tenderness.

From the Ware steeple came eleven slow strokes, the crescent moon sank down, and still he did not stir but remained looking upwards at those three blank windows, while across the screen of his sight there passed image after image. Although she was not there, never had he seen her so clearly as during that solitary hour. And more and more the presentiment grew that he would soon be with her again. He rejected the impulse to seek out Mrs. Hanley, whom he would find too eager for confidences. Instead, he would go to Dunn, tomorrow, and obtain the address from him. In a single sweeping act of vision he foresaw the circumstances which would enable him to find her and, as though that moment had already come, he was filled with happiness.

At last he turned slowly away. In the main thoroughfare the traffic was stilled, the shops had long since been closed, but at the street corners a few newsboys remained, calling the final edition. Dimly, throughout the evening, Paul had been conscious of their shouts but, sick to death of sensation, he had ignored them. Now

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however, his eye was caught in passing by a placard waved by a ragged urchin beneath a street lamp. Arrested, he took a few steps backwards, handed over a coin, and held the copy of the Chronicle to the flickering light. And there, in the stop press, were three blurred lines of print. The police had broken into the flat at Ushaw Terrace and found Enoch Oswald. He had hanged himself from the gaselier.

Paul slowly recovered himself.

"Poor devil," he murmured at last. "He promised he would go away, and this is what he intended to do!"

And with that exclamation, uttered in sorrow and compassion, all bitterness, the last shreds of hatred, seemed purged from him. He drew a long deep breath. The night air was damp and cool. From a nearby basement bakehouse, where the men were already at work, came the fragrance of new bread. There was no moon but through the roof-tops a few clear stars looked down upon the city as it settled at last to silence. Insensibly, Paul's heart lifted. His step quickened as he set out for the hotel. For the first time in manv months he felt the sweet savour of life, and the promise of the morning.